


In the Same Manner

by seashadows



Category: Moana (2016), Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Genre: FUCK YOU AHAB, Fix-It, M/M, You Have Been Warned, some short descriptions of how a whale is butchered, the fix-it fic that I know I at least definitely wanted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 08:32:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14565126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seashadows/pseuds/seashadows
Summary: Maui was flooded with relief when he saw the man paddling, or rather trying and failing to paddle.(A thousand-year-old friendship brings a demigod out to save a harpooneer, and one less canonical death results.)Or, Queequeg is a descendant of Moana a thousand years down the line, and Maui keeps his promises.





	In the Same Manner

He was in fact in the middle of something when the danger began to sing somewhere in his body, the place that warned him of peril and whose location he hadn’t quite been able to identify, but seeing to the fish could wait. No matter if they were talking about something in the seas to the north – one of Moana’s descendants needed him, and Maui (demigod of the Wind and Sea, thank you very much) would answer the unwitting call. 

All he could say was that this descendant in particular had better be grateful. His tattoos wouldn’t leave him alone until he left. 

Circling the clouded skies above the ocean where the call had come, Maui was flooded with relief when he saw the man paddling, or rather trying and failing to paddle. He couldn’t save anyone who died of diseases that killed with fever and red spots, no matter how much he mourned every single person who cried out for help. He couldn’t save anyone from a gunshot. He couldn’t save anyone from death by hard labor and white people. But this? He could _totally_ handle this. 

He dived. The man was heavy, but what was a demigod for if not dragging people up from halfway to Lalotai? “Come on, kid, don’t drown on me now,” he said. The man didn’t answer him, of course. It was still satisfying to say. “I’ve got you. You’re not going anywhere.” 

Come to think of it, he realized as he flew the man to the tiniest nearby speck of an island, he recognized him. He’d been a little kid the last time Maui saw him, but this man was from Kokovoko if he recalled correctly. It was a small island near enough to the coast of Aotearoa that his people spoke Maori. His tattoos told the same story. So Maui, after pushing enough to pound out half the ocean’s worth of seawater, adjusted his dialect accordingly. “Can you hear me?” 

The man’s eyes slowly opened, then popped wide open in shock. “Who are you?” 

“Tell me your name first,” said Maui. While he hadn’t seen this kid hit his head, you never knew, and he wasn’t about to get an earful from Hine-nui-te-po from sending a mortal to her out of sheer stupidity. “I need to know you’re with me.” 

“Queequeg.” 

“ _Queequeg?_ ” Maui repeated. “What kind of name is _that?_ ” No one from any of the island nations he watched over used those particular sounds. 

The man looked down, or rather out (directions were strange for someone lying on his back) in obvious embarrassment. “It’s what the _Pākehā_ call me,” he admitted. “I’ve been away from home for a long time. It’s…stuck.” He coughed out another burst of water, and Maui belatedly helped him to a sitting position. He was a horrible protector these days. 

“So what’s taken you away from home?” he asked, partly to distract himself and partly out of sheer curiosity. “Are you a wayfinder?” They tended to be a little thinner on the ground – or rather, the ocean – these days. 

“No, a _harpooneer_ ,” he said. His coloring was already better for the change in position. Score one for Maui. Not bad for a demigod who didn’t have a thing to do with healing. 

“What’s a harpooneer?” Maui asked. It wasn’t a word he recognized. Something from one of the white people’s languages, no doubt. This Queequeg had lapsed out of the cadences of Maori to say it. At least it had syllables he could pronounce without feeling like his tongue was about to fall out. 

Queequeg’s mouth twisted. Whatever a harpooneer was, it was obviously a concept alien enough to his people that he couldn’t translate it right away. _The things people do when they’re desperate_ , Maui thought, shaking his head. _It’s a shame_. “I spear oil-headed whales,” Queequeg finally said. “That’s what a harpooneer does. We spear them and the people on the boat strip them for their oil and – where are you going?” 

Until then, Maui hadn’t realized he was backing away. _Slowly_. “What did whales ever do to you?” he demanded. They were big and sometimes kind of dumb in the matter of staying away from boats, and they were a little too musical for his tastes, but to kill them and…in the name of all the gods, that was disgusting! A shudder shook his entire body. He’d known the whales were dying, but how had he not known _this_ was going on? Now he almost wished that Queequeg had indeed been hit in the head, because if this wasn’t him spouting nonsense, then he was probably going to throw up. 

Queequeg, at least, looked ashamed. “The _Pākehā_ need it for their lights,” he said. “I know it’s wrong, but…I saw the world that way. Kokovoko wasn’t…for…” He trailed off, staring at Maui again (specifically his chest, where he knew his best tattoos were), and leapt to a standing position. Maui inwardly rolled his eyes. “I know who you are!” 

Well, it was a neat echo of his ancestor of illustrious stubbornness, Maui had to admit that. “Maui, Demigod of the Wind and Sea, Hero of Men, Saver of Your Drowning Body, that’s me,” he said. “You didn’t think just any man could pull you out of the sea, did you? You’ve been talking to me all this time and you were fine, so maybe calm down.” A thought occurred to him. “How did you end up in the middle of the ocean, anyway?” 

Clouds gathered in Queequeg’s eyes. As suddenly as he’d popped up, he swayed, and Maui caught him and brought him back down to a seated position before he could fall. “Easy,” Maui told him. “You’re too weak to do that. You were in the water for how l– what’s wrong?” 

The tears that he’d probably lost too much water to replace were running down Queequeg’s cheeks, and his shoulders shook, but the story came out anyway. A three-year voyage (and the white people were crazy to want to stay out that long, but Maui kindly kept quiet about that), the boat captain who was willing to doom every soul for revenge, the illness, the monstrous white whale – and a man. 

“A man,” Maui echoed, once all the mentions of ‘him’ connected in his head. “What was his name?” 

Queequeg mumbled it, something like Ishmar, and then Maui realized what had happened. Most people he knew where idiots for craft – like Moana herself – or for love, but this one was an idiot for both and that was a new one on him. “You’re sure he didn’t survive?” he said. He didn’t hold out a lot of hope. Ishmar-or-Something was one of the white men, so he probably hadn’t been swimming all his life, as Queequeg likely had. 

Queequeg shook his bowed head. “If he found my coffin…” 

“Your what?” 

“Burial box.” 

So no _tangihanga_ for him, just a wooden box and presumably the sea. Strangest thing Maui had ever heard on the subject. They could have thought up something for him on that boat, at least. “All right, burial box,” he said. “What about it?” 

“It floated. I offered it to the boat for that purpose because I didn’t need it any longer.” Queequeg drew in on himself a little more and added, “He knew about it.” 

Maui sighed heavily. “You’re probably right,” he said, “but there’s always hope.” He touched his hook where he’d left it in the sand. This was ridiculous. He had better things to do than find some man’s lost love, especially a crazy one who did things to whales, but he’d promised Moana before she died that he’d always have an eye out for her children, and he kept his word. To however many generations. This could be exhausting. “You’re a lot like her,” he said, “you know that?” He wasn’t sure if Queequeg’s people still counted generations that far back. “Moana of –“ 

“Motunui,” Queequeg finished. Maui smiled. That was more like it. “Her descendants to the tenth generation found Kokovoko. She’s our foremother.” 

“Pulled me by the ear,” Maui couldn’t resist muttering. 

Queequeg blinked at him. “And she put back the heart of Papatūānuku after you almost ended every life in the ocean,” he pointed out, “so I don’t think she owes you anything.” 

Maui winced. “You have me there,” he said. He always hated when people brought that up. “Look. There are limits to what I can do, but I’ll tell you what – let me make sure you have food and water in you, and after you’ve recovered some, I’ll take you wherever you want to go.” 

Turned out, after a few days of no longer being in direct danger of expiring on the spot, there was only one place Queequeg wanted to go: back on a ship. “You’ve lost your mind,” Maui told him flatly. “I offer to take you anywhere in the world, and you want to risk becoming whale food again? Are you trying to die?” Ungrateful little shit. He had half a mind to let the whales take a crack at him. 

Queequeg’s face hardened at that. “No,” he said. “He wouldn’t want that. But there is a place called Nantucket, and if there are answers for me, they will be there.” 

Couldn’t argue with that, really. So Maui shifted into hawk form and scouted around, and sure enough, one of those white-people ships – one that had people with those harpoon things on deck, no less – was on a course that would bring them to Queequeg within the next few hours if he plunked him on the next island over. 

It was only his responsibility to make sure he lived, he told himself, but something about the promise he’d made to Moana (stupid, stupid, _stupid!_ ) must have lingered long enough for that pull on the edge of his consciousness to return some time later. Weeks, months, whatever, because time wasn’t the same to a demigod as it was to the people he guarded and that was the way it should have stayed. 

“You’re dreaming if you think I’m following him again,” he told his most expressive tattoo. “No, I kept my promise! He’s alive, isn’t he? I’m not re-enacting some story about lost love and - _OW!_ ” 

Sometimes, having tattoos that pulled on your sensitive points to make their own points was really, really inconvenient. 

Nantucket was easy enough to find when you were the demigod of the wind and sea. The dirty house with too many people in too many rooms that he lit on, well, he had to fault Queequeg’s taste there. A closer look inside from his seat on a window told him a different story, though, because…

There was the coffin box, and a white man who had to be Ishmar-or-Something waiting for him, and a lot of mutual crying and other mushiness that Maui didn’t have the stomach to watch. Especially when the clothes started coming off. No, thanks. 

He still didn’t miss Queequeg turning to no one in particular and whispering a silent thanks, and couldn’t resist telling him in turn that he was welcome before flying away. 

This, he realized with some satisfaction, was a heart that he’d returned all by himself.

**Author's Note:**

> I did my best to research Maori life and cosmology, and I mean no disrespect to the religion or people with this work. If I've gotten something wrong, please do tell me! 
> 
> Hine-nui-te-po, from what I found, is the goddess of death and the underworld (and she has a gnarly history with Maui herself in some mythos). Papatūānuku is the earth mother/goddess in the Maori creation story, and I combined her with Te Fiti for the purpose of Moana canon. 
> 
> _Pākehā_ is Maori for a white New Zealand resident or, sometimes, a white person in general. A _tangihanga_ is a traditional Maori death and burial ritual.


End file.
